This morning I read about how the big blue mailboxes in my neighbor- hood are systematically being
slotted for removal. I felt a little pang—no
more mailboxes? How will that change the
neighborhood? Then I read that the Postal
Service was targeting only those boxes
that averaged 25 or fewer letters deposited
a day. Ah, the removal made sense. The
neighborhood has already changed.

Almost 10 years into the 21st century,
institutions from the post office to the
auto industry, from newspapers to health
care, are grappling with how they should
adapt to major changes brought on by the
global economy, consumer needs, government mandates, and, most assuredly, the
technology revolution. Blamed by the
general public for not changing fast
enough, these institutions are also
maligned for many specific changes they
do make. “Everyone wants reform, but few
like to change,” is a frequent refrain.

Many of the questions about how
schools should change are the ones educators have asked for years. Are the
proposed changes needed reforms or frivolous fads? Will the new practices take
into account what we know about how
students learn? Will they lead to higher
achievement for more students, or will
they leave more students—and educators—behind? Will they better prepare
our students to become adults capable of
effecting wise change? These questions are
essential and timeless.

Other questions about teaching for the
21st century are new. One of these questions is, How can we respond to new
technology and our students’ engagement
with it? For example, how can teachers
deal with what Cheryl Lemke and Ed
Coughlin (p. 54) call “the democratization
of knowledge”? What should happen, for
example, when a teacher introducing
Newton’s laws of motion to her class finds
that one of her students has viewed
college lectures on physics on TED (p. 57),

another has explored the motion of skateboarding online, still another hasn’t even
heard of Newton, and a few students
cannot even read well? Today, more information than ever is at students’ fingertips,
but it takes skill to understand and
connect it to prior learning. Familiar with
technology and expecting to have a voice
in their own learning, students are more
than ever in need of the problem-solving,
critical-thinking, and communication
skills highlighted by the Partnership for
21st Century Skills (P21) (p. 11).

Emphasis on these 21st
century skills—skills that
are not new but more in
demand today—
immediately alarms some educators,
however. They fear that just
as the focus on testing has
marginalized some
subjects—for example
history, literature, the arts—
focusing on skills will lead
to an approach that discourages the teaching and
learning of foundational knowledge.

At a recent forum on 21st century
skills, educators Diane Ravitch and E. D.
Hirsch argued convincingly that creativity
and critical-thinking skills don’t transfer
across domains. Does anyone really think
Steven Spielberg could manage the
Yankees? Hirsch asked. Skills and domain
knowledge are intertwined—there are no
shortcuts, these educators noted.

Science educators James Trefil and
Wanda O’Brien-Trefil (p. 28) make
another point about the preeminence of
content. Students need critical-thinking
skills to consider the viability and ethics
of stem cell research, these authors write,
but first they need to know what a stem
cell is.

Authors Andrew J. Rotherham and
Daniel Willingham (p. 16) outline several
more challenges facing schools—primarily
the need to have a clear plan that

addresses curriculum, teacher expertise,
and assessment.

Without better curriculum, better
teaching, and better tests, the emphasis
on “21st century skills” will be a superficial one that will sacrifice long-term gains
for the appearance of short-term progress.

In this issue of Educational Leadership,educators describe what 21st centurycurriculum and instruction should looklike. They also show that schools areindeed integrating the teaching of bothcontent and skills. Forexample, Terrence Clark(p. 66) describes Bethpage’s21st century scholarsprogram, which offers richlearning to students afterschool. Sandy Cutshall(p. 40) details how studentsare connecting with peersinternationally as they learnnew languages and cultures.And Debra Gerdes andEllen Jo Ljung (p. 71)demonstrate how busi-

ness/school partnerships can involve
students in solving real problems.

Change is in the air here at Educational
Leadership, too. Check out our new
look—perfect binding and a new logo—
better to serve readers who wish to save
their beautiful print ELs. We also are
pleased to offer you a new digital issue
(see page 96 for details). It will let you
search and share selected articles with
friends as well as link to Web sites and
multimedia content. In our coming issues,
EL will tackle more themes of change. It’s
all about valuing what we know is good
while reaching for something even better.